The Challenge
Cat owners are a pretty underserved market in today's pet world, and most cat owners (including me) will be happy to tell you that.
Nulo Pet Food was looking to engage with them in a new way, and as the newest member of their design team (and the only person at the company who only owns cats!), I took on the challenge. Nulo wanted a cat-focused experience for upcoming events & digital interactions that highlighted the unique nature of cats while making sure that owners knew who to come to for the best kitty nutrition in the business.
Enter: Little Big Cats
Since cat people (usually) can't bring their cats to events, we had to think about this differently. If we can't talk to the cats, let's talk to the cat people about their cats.
With Lauren Mieli, owner of The Catnip Times, we put together a survey asking her readership about the State of the Cat in the world today. It covered topics like how cat owners saw themselves, how cat owners felt about stereotypes surrounding cats and their humans, and how cat owners felt about their cats.
We discovered that cat people are annoyed about the stereotyping of cats and cat people, and love their cats like members of the family.
These findings informed what I would do for Little Big Cats, from the basic concept to the copywriting to the illustration style.
Staying away from the stereotypes, Little Big Cats took shape as a warm, open campaign with a hint of humor. It was designed by cat people for cat people. The vector illustrations add personality and warmth, and take a distinctly modern tone built on Nulo's existing graphic language.
We directed cat owners to a quiz asking a series of questions about their cat. I created this quiz using my own extensive experience with cats, and categorized domestic kitties into four overarching personality types: Tiger, Lion, Cheetah, or Leopard.
(Take the quiz here and discover your cat's wild side! If you don't have a cat, take it for your dog. Or yourself. You'll just have to tweak the questions about boxes.)
Once they had their result, we handed them a postcard, customizable with their cat's name, and directed them to our sampling station to take a customized sample for their cat's specific personality.
Nulo's main brand is photography-heavy, and focused on the athletics of the animals with colorful swooshes to add motion and break up the space. Each component of Little Big Cats, from the cats' faces to the tropical leaves furnishing the backgrounds, is designed to play well with Nulo's existing assets. I pulled colors from the swooshes, and the subtle gradients in each piece add depth and call back to Nulo's main branding.
From there, I stretched the initial big cat faces into all kinds of engagements for Meow Meet-Up, where we were presenting Little Big Cats, including: masks for people to hold up, ads comparing little cats to big cats, and printing the faces on chocolate.
We got a lot of engagement, both in-person and online, over the two days of the convention. The campaign ended in some of our most-liked Instagram posts of all time with a whopping 900% increase in engagement.
Most importantly? Both me and my cat are Tigers on the inside.
